My Child Within- Healing from Trauma

Poetry as therapy..

I started writing poems and keeping a journal when I was 13..It helped me a lot with expressing my feelings & thoughts and feeling a little better when I was depressed or feeling lonely..Looking back on my journals in 2012, I felt incredibly triggered by all the pain and depression I felt in the mid 90's..Every single day for months on end I was writing about my sadness, my anger and my frustration because I couldn't express these feelings to my parents..If I did, there were always consequences.So I learnt to keep them to myself..

In the early weeks of meeting my now husband, I told him about my painful childhood and he suggested that I do something cathartic and burn those journals..Reading them just brought back my pain and made me re-live every sad moment...We decided to burn them on a barbecue in my Dad's house..I felt a little sadness when they were burning but mostly I felt a feeling of release...It felt good to know that I couldn't read about every single day, every single tear, heartbreak, abandonment, argument or trauma..I carry these memories around anyway as my body and brain remember..I am stuck in this state of hyperarousal & trauma..

I would like to share one of my most personal poems that I wrote about my narcissistic parents..I didn't realise that they were narcissistic at the time..I just knew that my emotions were caused by their behaviour..